For most of the first two decades of web design, the website and the web experience were not traditionally seen as something on which to experiment. The cost and risk were perceived to be too high, and the necessary skills and technology were scarce.

While the proliferation of A/B testing software has somewhat changed this, regrettably the vast majority of businesses fail to see “test and learn” as a necessity. This notion -- that experimentation is an optional facet of design or product development -- is a failure in the evolution of digital optimization.

Experimentation is not a thing occasionally done on the tail end or edges of design. Rather, it is core to all good design and product development. Experimentation is not a thing you do. It’s how you do things.

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Successful businesses like Netflix and Amazon are experimenting constantly on their digital experiences. Not only that, they are also experimenting through all veins of their operations – from their brand value propositions to their supply chains.

The companies successfully using experimentation to drive business results have shifted from myopic metrics, like order conversion rate, to holistic measurements of customer success, like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and customer lifetime value (CLTV).

These organizations – the ones that experiment continuously on the problems most worth solving across the entire customer journey– are the ones most likely to achieve and exceed product market fit.